Professor Middleton has been involved in the development of robotic surgery and the use of computer navigation in surgery since 1997 when he published a paper titled Active compliance in robotic surgery – the use of force control as a dynamic constraint. More recently Professor Middleton and his colleague Tom Wainwright have collaborated with colleagues from the Faculty of Science & Technology at Bournemouth University to review the current literature on virtual reality based training in orthopaedic surgery. The results of this work with Venketesh Dubey and Neil Vaughan, were presented earlier this by year by Neil at the Science and Information Conference 2015, an international conference held in London, United Kingdom.

Links to the papers presented can be found below.

Can Virtual-Reality Simulators Assess Experience and Skill Level of Orthopaedic Surgeons?

and

Does Virtual-Reality Training on Orthopaedic Simulators Improve Performance in the Operating Room?

Further work on the use of virtual reality training simulators in orthopaedic surgery continues within the Orthopaedic Research Institute. Prof Middleton can be seen below trialling the VirtaMed ArthroS simulator.